Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are large programmable arrays of gates that can be repeatedly reconfigured at hardware level to provide application specific hardware. FPGA systems can offer an effective, cheaper-cost-per-throughput solution for those performing large data functions like database sorts or business analytics which are increasingly common, especially in datacenter operations. For example, risk management computations for financial institutions, insurance companies, and other business entities may consume large amounts of computing resources, which may be reduced by employing FPGAs instead of generic computing systems.
While computational costs may be reduced and efficiency increased through the use of FPGAs, initial investment may be prohibitively large for smaller operations. Even for larger organizations, an FPGA based system may not be utilized full time reducing the overall efficiency and investment value. A similar example involves datacenter operations. A comprehensive datacenter with data stores, servers, firewalls, and other specialized equipment may provide much needed data storage, accessibility, and security. However, the number of potential users whose needs can justify setting up a large scale datacenter is rather limited. And, even such potential users may not utilize capabilities of a large scale datacenter fully all the time.
Thus, while efficiency and cost-effectiveness of FPGA based technologies in large scale data operations are appreciated, their effectiveness for a wide range of users may be limited due to initial investment and operational maintenance considerations.